too loverly to eat

Grand National Pistachio and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Em and I love having a theme for our baking, so when my manager at work dropped a hint that I should make some Grand National themed cupcakes, I couldn’t refuse!

I decided to make pistachio cupcakes with white chocolate butter cream. Here is the recipe:

Cupcakes:

100g pistachios

140g golden caster sugar

140g butter, very soft

2 eggs

140g self-raising flour

5 tbsp milk

Buttercream:

100g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

250g icing sugar

100g white chocolate

Heat oven to 170C/150C fan and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases.

Put 85g pistachios into a food processor with half the sugar, then whizz until very finely chopped.

Tip into a large mixing bowl with the remaining sugar, butter, eggs, flour and milk and beat until smooth.

Divide between cases, then bake for 20-25 mins until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.

For the buttercream, melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.

Beat together the butter and icing sugar, then beat in the melted white chocolate.

The decorations took at bit of time to make. But it was a good way to use up small amounts of different coloured fondant for the jockey’s silks. I cut out a template out of thin card for the silks and the arms and used this to cut out numerous pieces in different colours. Some of these were then cut into quarters and some cut into halves and swapped around to create different colour combinations. Stripes and spots were added to some of the silks.

The horses heads were made by cutting out the head shapes in dark brown fondant and the nose shapes in pale brown fondant. These were then assembled and eyes and ears were added and the nostrils and smiles were made using various tools.